Cruel Intentions

Cruel Intentions is a 1999 remake of Dangerous Liasons, except with teenagers in Upper East Side Manhattan. An evil, soulless team of stepbrother and sister, Sebastian and Kathryn (Ryan Phillipe and Sarah Michelle Gellar), plan to destroy the innocence of two girls new to their school (Selma Blair and Reese Witherspoon). Witherspoon's character wrote to Seventeen proclaiming her decision to remain chaste, and Sebastian believes her to be the perfect challenge. Sebastian and Kathryn make a bet. He has to have sex with the self-proclaimed proud virgin. If he loses, Kathryn gets his car. If he succeeds, he gets to sleep with Kathryn.

Manipulation, vindication, pseudo-incest...in short, Gossip Girl: The Movie. They directly based the plot of an episode off this movie. Blair and Chuck in season two were Kathryn and Sebastian, just not related.

Let's meet our main characters.

Such a close family

Now we meet Cecile, a new student played by Selma Blair. I would tell you how innocent she's supposed to be, but her koala shirt speaks for itself.

Another thing that speaks for itself in this picture is Cristine Baranski's face

The plan comes out after this meeting, and we get a little introduction to Annette Hargrove.

And she's from Kansas.

And then a formal introduction.

The outfit screams "I'm a virgin and proud of it."

After a dose of Annette's chastity khakis, it's about time for some girl to girl tongue action.

This won for the "Best Kiss" category at the MTV Movie Awards in 2000.

Kathryn tells Cecile that girls learn how to kiss by practicing on each other. Cecile believes her. Later, Kathryn tells her that girls learn how to be good in bed by sleeping with everyone they can. Cecile believes her.

Kathryn keeps cocaine in her cross necklace. I wouldn't listen to anything she says.

A little more inappropriate relations.

Complete with dirty talk. Too bad you didn't get to hear that.

A negative review on rottentomatoes.com says: "Despite its highly descriptive dialogue, Cruel Intentions features no nudity ... I doubt teenage boys will be satisfied just to hear Buffy talk dirty."

I'm going to stop here and leave the fates of these characters a mystery, although the entire tone of the movie shifts at the end. I'm not sure how I feel about the ending. I didn't quite expect it, I've heard critics call it a cop-out, but I think it was definitely effective.

Now I think is a good time to mention just how gorgeous Ryan Phillipe is.

Dude.

Even lame episodes of Gossip Girl can be sugar-coated with hot guys and sex scenes. Same goes for this movie. It was nominated for a Teen Choice Award for Sexiest Love Scene.

Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillipe got married the year this movie came out. If you don't envy Reese Witherspoon for being pretty, talented, and successful, envy her for this.

On Rotten Tomatoes, it received a 47% from critics and a 79% from viewers. Other sites have it rated much higher, but most of the negative reviews criticize it for being an excuse to look at pretty people doing bad things. Sarah Michelle Gellar won an MTV Movie Award in 2000 for Best Female Performance and was nominated for Best Villian. It also won the Teen Choice Award for Best Drama. Critic Charles Taylor on salon.com calls it "The Dirtiest-minded American movie in recent memory - and an honestly corrupt entertaining picture is never anything to sneeze at." I agree with that. Fluffy but definitely entertaining.

Love,
Juliana